Broken Glass
by Nova Mist
Summary: AU. The ultimate question always is: was the sacrifice worth it? In the not-too-distant future, one young woman searches within herself for the answer, with the help of an unlikely source...


**                                                                       :: B R O K E N . G L A S S ::**

**                                                                                  :: Prologue ::**

The first thing she did as she sat down was flip open her Zippo and light up a Camel, take a long drag, and blow the smoke out through her nose in the general direction of the other person in the room, to try and irritate them, to make them go away before they started their usual torrent of stupid questions. 

It was almost like a ritual. 

Sometimes she wondered why she bothered to get out of bed every morning. 

"How are you feeling today?"

"Fine." the girl replied flippantly, focusing her gaze on the surface of the table in front of her. It was a nice table. Mahogany. Oak. Some sort of wood, anyway. She was pretty sure it was mahogany. Not that she was any sort of expert on the subject.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive." She replied, taking another long drag of her cigarette.

"Well, you don't seem fine to me."

"Really." her reply was a statement more than a question. She didn't want to give them the satisfaction of asking them a question. Asking them a question always made her feel ignorant, stupid. 

"Yes. In fact, it seems to me you're anything but fine. You're very tense."

"Is that your professional opinion, or just your best guess?" the girl sneered sarcastically. She didn't even have to look up from the table's surface to see the frown. She could feel it burning into her. 

"It's neither. Just my own instinctive feeling on the matter." 

The girl didn't reply. She instead focused on tracing the natural patterns in the wood –which were suddenly fascinating – with one perfectly-manicured finger.

"You have beautiful nails."

The girl smirked. "Hmm, flattery now? That's a new approach for you."

"Call it flattery if you wish. I was merely stating simple fact. Do you take care of them yourself?"

The girl laughed mirthlessly, holding up the hand she had been tracing the patterns of the table's surface with, examining the nails. 

Perfect, as always. A nice dark crimson colour today, painted the night before during a fit of boredom. "My grandmother taught me how to keep my nails nice, no matter the circumstances."

"Your grandmother?"

The girl sighed. She knew where this was going. She could sense it. "Yes, my grandmother."

"Paternal or maternal?"

"Paternal." The girl answered in a bored tone, going back to her previous task of tracing the patterns on the wooden table's surface. 

"She raised you, did she not?"

The girl gritted her teeth. "I hate that question."

"Did she though?"

The girl's eyes flickered, and she felt the familiar pain rise up in her gut – the sadness, the guilt, the love…

…until she roughly shoved it back down again. 

She remained silent, absently flicking the ash off the end of her long-forgotten cigarette, and taking another long drawl before stubbing it out, and lighting another. 

"Well?"

"Well what?" the girl asked calmly. 

She couldn't help but smirk in pleasure as she heard the bite of impatience in that usually infuriatingly calm voice. "Well, did your grandmother raise you or not? Surely my information is correct when it com-"

"Of course your information is correct!" the girl snarled, cutting the question off. "It always is!" She flicked the gathering ash off the end of her cigarette into the ashtray. "That's why I wonder what the point of this whole thing is!" she snarled suddenly. "Why do you ask me all these stupid questions, when you already know all the answers?"

"Because they lead to questions which I _don't_ know the answer to. Or at least, not entirely."

For the first time that morning, the girl looked up, her green eyes blazing angrily at her questioner. "Fuck you!" she snarled. "Just…ugh!" she yelled in frustration, inhaling deeply on her cigarette with a shaky hand, fixing her eyes back on the table's varnished wooden surface. 

A long moment of silence followed, and the girl was glad for it. It meant that she didn't have to think about anything else other than the cigarette in her hand, which she inhaled from heavily as if her life – or at least her sanity – depended on it. 

"You're upset."

"No shit, Sherlock." The girl sneered.

"Maybe you'll feel better about it all if you talk to someone about it. If you tell someone about it."

The girl rolled her eyes. "Oh, please," she muttered. "Tell someone about it, eh? Like who?"

"You could tell me." 

She looked back up at her questioner, eyes flickering with emotion. "You don't want to know."

"Sure I do."

She just looked at him, disbelieving.  

And then the final question was asked: "Tell me."

And, because she had no more energy to fight anymore, that is what she did. 


End file.
